Dassault Systemes, a French company, bought SolidWorks in 1997. It has proved itself to be an acquisition like no other. First of all, there was none of the usual blood letting when one company swallows another. We heard of no cuts in staff at SolidWorks and its management stayed in place. Although SolidWorks has positioned itself so it doesn't look like it is trying to encroach on Dassault's large enterprise base, it continues to work more or less independently of Dassault and seeks its own customers among small and medium sized businesses. Heck, I don't even know anyone at SolidWorks who is learning French.

But a headline like the one from 3DTansVidia may show the companies are operating a little too independently. At the very least, users should be able to exchange data. If I adopted a child from another country, I'd want it to be able to communicate with the rest of the family. I'd be a little embarrassed if people had to hire interpreters for my children.

Comments

Has anyone ever considered the legal aspect of the Catia vs. SW fiasco? Sure, we all want to have a villain for our day to day soap opera - but Catia is built on Spatial technology, and SW is built on Parasolid. There are licensing issues, and because UGS/Siemens/whoever they are this week own the kernel, they have some say in how the technology is used, and accessed.

Wow, where did that come from? And how come it doesn't get mentioned more often? It's easier to be frustrated than rational, that's why.

Who would really think that Dassault would intentionally keep the products at a level of incompatibility of this nature? The Catia/PLM software is entirely scalable, and SW would make a welcome addition, if that was the stated purpose. In reality, it's (Catia) a different software for a different user base. But it's easy for Joe Daily User to spout off about cost and perceived sales tactics, when they've, in reality, never even begun to scratch the surface of (most likely) either product's full capability. How many SW users even know about the CAA, RADE and KnowledgeWare capabilities of Catia? Or PLM integration? If you know anything about any of this stuff, you surely know that SW is not "Catia Lite", nor has it ever been meant to be.

"For example, one has to wonder why Solidworks, with all the bright brains behind their product, has never made any attempt to address complex surface modeling. Instead users must rely on add-ons or other surface modelers, such as Rhino or Alias/Autodesk StudioTools. Don't tell me they have no clue on how to handle curvature continuity..."

I've said the same thing for many years on Usenet and in upFront.eZine.

What also should be mentioned is just how badly SolidWorks does at handling non-native data.

Only companies really addressing the non-native data situation are Kubotek with KeyCreator and Think3 with thinkID.

It's really sad that thinkID is so poorly marketed in the US. It's a great product.

By making the two products separate, DS avoids internal competition, and this is more important to them then the will of a few customers. That's as simple as that.

If SW and CATIA start to "talk" better, then SW will very quickly enter into CATIA's user base causing an overall loss for DS since SW is much cheaper than CATIA. And the competion will not be just between the products, but of course between the employees behind each product. Being from two different countries is sure to make things worse.

UGS is indeed taking a different approach. Time will tell which one will prevail. For now UGS is losing money so I guess that what is good for the customers is not necessarily good for the vendor...

The issue of needing a mid-range AND a high-end CAD package is real, and is present in lots of company. For example, a very complex part can be designed in the high-end package, and the tooling can be designed in the mid-range package for ease of use and cost effectiveness.

UGS is the only one that I know who adressed this issue, with Solid Edge as the mid-range and NX as the high-end CAD tool. It offers an unmatched inter-operability, meaning that you can import native NX files into Solid Edge and it keeps its associativity if the NX part changes. Furthermore, it both uses the UGS-owned Parasolid 3D kernel, so the translation is pretty seemless.

Now, speaking of translation, can you name a company that had problems migrating from Catia V4 to V5?

It is my personal belief that no one product can serve the needs of the single user up to the largest enterprises in the world. Want simple proof: people vote with their wallets (why else would we have both CATIA and AutoCAD)

It was exactly this philosophy that led us to merge with DS approximately 9 years ago. I remember hearing all of the comments that DS was going to limit SolidWorks, the company was going to get crushed, management was going to leave... at the time I told people that time will tell. You can say what you want, however in those 9 years, we have continued to remain focused on building great products and delievering great service to our customers. We have been rewarded by our customers - the best proof is the growth of our base from almost nothing to well over 1/2 million users and our revenues have grown 30X in that same period.

I believe you need to look at the relative overlap of the markets (think of it as centers of gravity). Our estimates (backed by data) is that the relative overlap of the markets are approximately 5-10%. This has nothing to do with the geometry created, it has more to do with the integrated applications that people want/need to use, the problems they are trying to solve and how they want to be supported.

If you were in my shoes would you focus your resources on the 5-10% part of the market or the 90-95% of the market?

Let me be clear, the need for people to share information between SolidWorks and CATIA is very real, we feel this is best solved by people who are focussed 100% of their time on this problem.

John

ps. Je parlais Francais (I speak French because I was a foreign exchange student while in high school).

Dassault and SolidWorks are talking... Dassault/Catia is making sure they keep the Solidworks team in check so that they do not start to expand their reach into Catia's strengths.
For example, one has to wonder why Solidworks, with all the bright brains behind their product, has never made any attempt to address complex surface modeling. Instead users must rely on add-ons or other surface modelers, such as Rhino or Alias/Autodesk StudioTools. Don't tell me they have no clue on how to handle curvature continuity...
As for data translation, it fits into the same strategy: keep both products as separate as possible, and nobody has to learn french.